I know this will never happen.
But I’m just thinking, if Autodesk bought blender, would you buy Blender At the price simmilar to other software in autodesk?
If so, why and why not? What would it take for you to buy it?
I’m not sure. Probably I wouldn’t. Not with it’s current (aimed for 2.6) capabilities atleast.
I would probably take XSI and Zbrush.
Or If Modo was any good at character rigging/animation, i would probably take it instead. I really don’t know, is it? Never found any advanced character rigs for modo in youtube…
I really love the design of modo, nice icons, nice looking 3D view, everything about the visuals is slick (But that’s besides the point). The renderer in modo is spectacular…
What would it take for me to buy Blender:
The hotkey based blender workflow in Blender is top notch. That’s one thing I’d buy blender for, but there are other things that make me wonder.
I really don’t like some UI concepts for Blender. Even though, i can change many of them (Such as Right click select, which still makes no sense to me, and trackball), others I can’t touch (Without no python skills atleast). For example, I would have folders in the outliner instead of layers, I would treat object groups as single objects, I would place “GLSL” in the shading select menu as it makes no sense to me that it’s so hidden. I don’t like the current way drivers are implemented, it should use nodes (+math nodes) instead. I would also take out constraints and use nodes instead, because constraints are basically the same as drivers. But these are not that important…
For me to buy Blender, the internal renderer should be nearly as good as modo, and 3D view as fast as zbrush for sculpting, and B-mesh already implemented with all those advanced modeling tools, otherwise it’s not much of a competitor against other software feature wise, now is it?
But as long as Blender is free, and I have the trust in BF (Unlike autodesk) for improvements, I’m no doubt a Blender user.
It’d pretty much be impossible for Autodesk to buy out the Blender Institute because of the GPL license that Blender has (they’d have to hunt down all of the developers that contributed code since Blender 2.25 or start their development all the way from version 2.24).
Then if the unlikely did happen and Blender was bought, the community would just fork the program, rename it, and continue developing it as an Open Source project.
As long as there were free/open source alternatives out there I would’nt buy Blender. Only then, I would buy it if the price was reasonable, under $200. It would be hard for me to pay any more than $500 or $600 for a software package.
As powerful as Maya/Max/Zbrush are, i feel they are way overpriced, but then again in a free-market economy a company can choose it’s profit margin as ridiculous as that margin may be.
As powerful as Maya/Max/Zbrush are, i feel they are way overpriced, but then again in a free-market economy a company can choose it’s profit margin as ridiculous as that margin may be.
+1
Way overpriced… It’s hard for a hobbyist to get a start with prices like that. Unless he steals, ofcource.
How i wish photoshop didn’t cost a car
I am not sure if they are overpriced considering the level those programs can pull off.
I am to be honest not sure if I would buy Blender. Why? I it is too much of a patchwork.
Most significantly the render and material area lacks behind other solutions.
But then it also depends on how expensive it would be, at 100 to 300 I might be on board
above that I would then pay more and get a full set of tools.
With modeling texturing and animation I would say I am more then happy with Blender.
B-Mesh here or there I cannot complain.
The particle system and smoke system might not be as high end as Maya but for what
I would only do it is also more then great.
$60 is the price of your average VIDEO GAME. Personally, the thousands of dollars they charge is just fine by me. They’re not selling as many copies as a video game company would (not to mention video game companies rarely make ONLY one game cough call of duty cough).
I wouldn’t. If I were pro, I would buy modo or Maya. Blender just isn’t there yet. But, it seems like they are refreshing Blender, going from the bottom and working their way up.
I have used a few other program like Maya and Lightwave before (for school) and to be honest, I prefer Blender’s fast workflow above them. But my dream is to go commercially with using mainly open source software and making it the industry standard, but of course, that is just a dream. So I’m not sure if I would want to pay for it, but if all 3D software in the world was exact the same price and there is no open source alternative, I would probably go for Blender.